Hi all. Sorry for the somewhat clumsy title. I'm in the process of testing out FreeNAS version 11.2-U7 and looking to migrate to it for my homelab's storage server. I have 2 questions relating to the mixing of disks with different capacities in VDEVs. I haven't decided on which drives I'm going to use yet, but to provide a concrete example, let's say I have two 4TB disks and two 8TB disks. I want to make a RAIDZ1 VDEV containing all the disks using the full capacity of the 4TB disks and 4TB of the capacity of each of the 8TB drives, then I want to create a mirror VDEV containing the remaining capacity of the 8TB disks. I understand this isn't possible to do from the GUI of FreeNAS 11.2-U7.
The first question is whether there exists a user guide on the creation of such a VDEV for version 11.2-U7. I had a look in this subforum and found a few threads on this question from 2013-2014, but I don't know if the procedure outlined in them still applies for 11.2-U7 or not. One example thread: Setting up a raidz1 with different sized disks - FreeNAS 9.1 (November 2013). The procedure there:
That is, use gpart from the command line to create gpt partition schemes on each of the member disks, then create a swap and a data partition of the desired capacity for each member disk. Then create a new storage pool using the p2 (data) partitions of each of the member disks. Is this still the recommended method for creating a VDEV using disks of different capacities in FreeNAS version 11.2-U7, or is there an updated guide somewhere?
The second question is about the future expansion of the hypothetical RAIDZ1 VDEV created above. If I were to replace the 4TB disks for 8TBs (one at a time, naturally), would I be able to delete the mirror VDEV which existed on the two original 8TB disks and resize the data partitions created on them above, allowing me to expand the RAIDZ1 VDEV (which was originally created with two 4TB drives and two 8TB drives) in capacity to use all of the 8TB now available on each disk? My understanding is that expanding a storage pool by replacing each of the member disks for ones with higher capacity would normally allow expansion, but I wonder if the process of manually creating the partitions interferes with this in any way.
My system specs are in my signature. Thanks.
The first question is whether there exists a user guide on the creation of such a VDEV for version 11.2-U7. I had a look in this subforum and found a few threads on this question from 2013-2014, but I don't know if the procedure outlined in them still applies for 11.2-U7 or not. One example thread: Setting up a raidz1 with different sized disks - FreeNAS 9.1 (November 2013). The procedure there:
Code:
gpart create -s gpt ada0 gpart add -b 128 -i 1 -t freebsd-swap -s 2G ada0 gpart add -i 2 -t freebsd-zfs ada0 gpart create -s gpt ada1 gpart add -b 128 -i 1 -t freebsd-swap -s 2G ada1 gpart add -i 2 -t freebsd-zfs ada1 gpart create -s gpt ada2 gpart add -b 128 -i 1 -t freebsd-swap -s 2G ada2 gpart add -i 2 -t freebsd-zfs ada2 gpart create -s gpt ada3 gpart add -b 128 -i 1 -t freebsd-swap -s 2G ada3 gpart add -i 2 -t freebsd-zfs ada3 zpool create -f /mnt raidz ada0p2 ada1p2 ada2p2 ada3p2
That is, use gpart from the command line to create gpt partition schemes on each of the member disks, then create a swap and a data partition of the desired capacity for each member disk. Then create a new storage pool using the p2 (data) partitions of each of the member disks. Is this still the recommended method for creating a VDEV using disks of different capacities in FreeNAS version 11.2-U7, or is there an updated guide somewhere?
The second question is about the future expansion of the hypothetical RAIDZ1 VDEV created above. If I were to replace the 4TB disks for 8TBs (one at a time, naturally), would I be able to delete the mirror VDEV which existed on the two original 8TB disks and resize the data partitions created on them above, allowing me to expand the RAIDZ1 VDEV (which was originally created with two 4TB drives and two 8TB drives) in capacity to use all of the 8TB now available on each disk? My understanding is that expanding a storage pool by replacing each of the member disks for ones with higher capacity would normally allow expansion, but I wonder if the process of manually creating the partitions interferes with this in any way.
My system specs are in my signature. Thanks.
